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Tribeca 2015: ‘Man Up’ Fails to Woman Up
At 34, Nancy (Londoner-accented Lake Bell) is a flakey journalist on the reluctant look for love at the pestering of friends and family. Through a case of mistaken identity hinging on a self-help book, she winds up on a date turned epic day with Jack (Simon Pegg), an online marketing manager. Charming, right? It’s this on-the-nose “charm” which will divide audiences into lovers and haters (with this viewer falling more towards the latter). In spite of a stellar cast, Man Up falls flat on its promising premise of being a rom-com for nonbelievers. More
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Tribeca Diary, Day Two: An ace, a three, and a Jack
Friday’s films at Tribeca 2015 is a fine example of why this year’s festival lineup is so strong. There are some years where Tribeca features quite a few movies that prove the adage “‘Independent’ does not necessarily mean ‘good,’” but this year is not one of them. Although one of the movies below stands above […] More
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Tribeca ’15: Stephen Colbert to interview George Lucas
Though Stephen Colbert has dropped his iconic “Stephen Colbert” persona, the nerd side of him we always saw on The Colbert Report isn’t an act. We’ve previously shared moments that demonstrate Colbert’s nerddom for The Lord of the Rings, but near the end of the show’s run he talked about why he’s the truly original […] More
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Tribeca Film Festival 2014: ‘Black Coal, Thin Ice’ a gorgeous, meticulous thriller
Black Coal, Thin Ice Directed by Diao Yinan China, 2014 Diao Yinan’s Black Coal, Thin Ice is a gorgeous, meticulous, wryly funny police critique couched in thriller terms. Police officer Zhang Zili (Liao Fan) has a rough go of it from the outset. He parts ways with his ex-wife after a pitiful attempt to (literally) […] More
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Tribeca Film Festival 2014: ‘I Won’t Come Back’ a resonant, poignant drama
I Won’t Come Back Directed by Ilmar Raag Russia, 2014 Anya (Polina Pushkaruk) is an orphan on the track to success. She receives top marks in school and makes her way into graduate school as a professor’s assistant. When an old friend, Dima (Sergey Yatsenyuk), gets her into trouble with the police she goes on […] More
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Tribeca Film Festival 2014: Andrew T. Betzer Interview
I spoke with Andrew T. Betzer about his new film, Young Bodies Heal Quickly, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Neal Dhand: Probably for obvious reasons, this film reminds me a lot of your short, John Wayne Hated Horses. Was that the impetus for making it? Did you expand from the original script or write […] More
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Tribeca Film Festival 2014: ‘Love and Engineering’ a funny, heartfelt documentary
Love and Engineering Directed by Tonislav Hristov Finland, Germany, and Bulgaria, 2014 The apartments of the four main subjects of Tonislav Hristov’s documentary Love and Engineering are illuminating. Literally. Each Finnish flat glows with at least three computer and TV screens, always displaying a video game. Hristov’s question is age-old – can love be calculated? […] More
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Tribeca Film Festival 2014: ‘Manos Sucias’ a confident and exciting debut feature
Manos Sucias Directed by Josef Kubota Wladyka Colombia and USA, 2014 Jacobo (Jarlin Javier Martinez), a world-hardened but innocent fisherman, and naïve, 19 year-old Delio (Cristian James Abvincula) set out on a dangerous drug mission on the coast of Colombia in Josef Kubota Wladyka’s directorial debut. This film is reminiscent of the recent La Jaula de […] More
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Tribeca 2014: ‘Manos Sucias’ plunges viewers into dangerous world of Colombian drug runners
Manos Sucias Directed by Josef Wladyka Colombia, 2014 It’s not hard to see why the great Spike Lee would want to get his hands on the drug-trafficking dramatic thriller Manos Sucias. It’s exceptionally made and extraordinarily tense. It also profiles a culture that’s both rarely depicted in art and quite underserved in real life. Lee […] More
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Tribeca 2014: ‘Next Goal Wins’ follows biggest underdogs in soccer history
Next Goal Wins Directed by Mike Brett and Steve Jamison United Kingdom, 2014 For sports fans, there’s nothing more hopeless than cheering for a perennial loser. Die-hard supporters of the Detroit Lions, Cleveland Browns, and Kansas City Royals, among other notoriously bad franchises, know the agony of defeat all too well. But they’ve got nothing […] More
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Tribeca 2014: ‘When the Garden Was Eden’ remembers an all-time great basketball team forgotten by time
When the Garden Was Eden Directed by Michael Rapaport USA, 2014 It was Game 5 of the 1970 NBA finals. A tight series between the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks might have turned when Knicks star Willis Reed went down with a leg injury. Reed—the captain of the team, the league MVP, and […] More
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Tribeca 2013: ‘The Machine’ is a fully realized, challenging science fiction film
The Machine wins right out of the gate by mentioning Alan Turing and his Turing Test in the context of a sci-fi thriller. Turing became one of the fathers of modern computing during World War II thanks to his engineering efforts on the side of the Allies, and his Turing Test measures whether a computer can dupe a human being into believing that it is human. The Machine starts by imagining a computer which is capable of passing the Turing Test, raising stakes that are realistically grounded and immense for the future of mankind. More